Coaches Corner with ROB DITOMA of Fairleigh Dickinson

ROB DITOMA Fairleigh Dickinson - Head Coach

It is a great accomplishment to be heading to any college to be part of a baseball team. That is something most people will never experience and only get to imagine. In a sense, you should arrive on campus very proud.

With that being said, I believe the way the summer baseball circuit is nowadays it seems as though we have all created a culture that the accomplishment has been achieved when you make it on the roster and/or receive a scholarship. If you do arrive with a sense of "mission accomplished," I can almost guarantee that the college baseball experience will be nothing like you dreamed it would be. My advice is to arrive as hungry as you were on the first day you played a summer ball or a high school game and realized college coaches were there to watch the game.

A college baseball Fall will be nothing like you ever experienced before. You have been conditioned and trained your whole life to try and be ready for it, but from years of coaching, I have come to learn that no one is ever really "ready." You will be competing, yes competing, at practice every single minute of the day. You will be competing with people your age AND 22 year old seniors who have been waiting three years to finally get on the field. It does not matter if you are a recruited walk on, or the highest scholarship player in that freshman class. Expect to fight every day to be noticed and to try and stand out.

As college coaches, we have been recruiting you for a long time. Some strong college coach to recruit relationships have been built. But understand that the minute you get to campus that relationship is over. You are no longer a college coach's recruit. So the relationship that was very buddy-buddy over the last two-three years will not be the same. You are now a player on the roster. This is the hardest thing incoming freshman has to adapt to. The coach is now trying to develop you as a player, get you to be a contributor on that year's team, and develop you as a person. Probably the last thing they are trying to do is be your best friend. Which is opposite of what they were trying to do during the recruiting process. If you come to the campus in the Fall with an understanding of that concept you will be major steps ahead of everyone else.